


A Picture of Me Without You

by Moontyger



Category: Deadly Premonition | Red Seeds Profile
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:50:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/pseuds/Moontyger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The farther he got from Greenvale, the more doubts Zach began to have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Picture of Me Without You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vintar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vintar/gifts).



His coffee didn't predict the future anymore. Zach poured milk into his execrable airport coffee and waited, but it just swirled in formless chaos, stubbornly devoid of patterns that held any meaning he could comprehend. It was strange - it was such a little thing, but he'd never expected it to change. He couldn't explain why it had. Maybe it only worked for York or maybe it had only happened because of the connection between them and wouldn't have worked for either of them on their own.

Or maybe omens simply weren't needed any longer. He'd solved the case: found the source of the red seeds and left the red room behind. Maybe he'd left that part of his life behind as well. From now on, things would be solid, ordinary, no slipping between worlds when he least expected. Zach was still an FBI agent, but perhaps he'd just have mundane cases now – normal humans killing each other for the usual petty reasons instead of psychoactive seeds from another world or dead that came back to life when it rained.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

When it came right down to it, he wasn't sure how he felt about most of it. He hadn't only worked on red seeds cases, of course, but even if he'd forgotten everything about the night his parents died until forcibly reminded of it, wasn't this case the real reason York had become an FBI agent in the first place? He'd wanted answers, for both of them – something to explain who and what had destroyed his family. Something to explain the red room Zach saw all the time and York only saw in his dreams.

He'd wanted justice, for all of them – for York and Zach, but also Anna and Becky, Diane and Carol, Thomas and maybe even George, murderer but nearly as much a victim of Kaysen and the red seeds as _his_ victims had been. For all those who'd come before them, for the bodies lining the long trail that had at last led him to Greenvale and Kaysen. And for Emily – for Emily most of all.

Now that he had the closest thing he'd ever get to that, however, Zach couldn't help but wonder what came next. Did he even have a reason to continue as a federal agent? But if he didn't, what else could he do? It had been years since he'd even considered another career.

When he left Greenvale, he'd been optimistic about the future, even happy. But the closer his plane flew to Washington, the more doubts he had. 

Greenvale had been different. Not only had everyone in the town been touched by the seeds and the strange events they caused, knowingly or otherwise, but no one there knew Zach particularly well. For all the time he spent there, he was an outsider. It was the kind of town where even if he moved there, he'd be an outsider the rest of his life, but there was a sort of comfort in that.

In Washington, he'd be immersed in the life he'd had before. The life that wasn't truly his, the one that he'd watched from the other side rather than living: York's life. And now he had to take it over without a hitch, with no visible hesitation, as though it had always been his.

Because to everyone else, it had.

He'd reported into the Bureau while he was still at the airport, so he didn't have to go in today. Tomorrow he'd have to file paperwork, decide just how much of the truth to put on the official record, but today he could just go home. 

Zach thought he was prepared. But as soon as he opened the door, he was struck by such a peculiar sensation that he had to close it fast, leaning against it with this eyes closed. It wasn't that he'd never seen the place. It wasn't _his_ and yet it was. He'd never been here before, but he'd seen it regularly, whenever York was here rather than in yet another small town reeling from a nasty homicide. It created a truly peculiar sense of both being in an entirely new location and yet being intimately familiar with everything about it – something like deja vu while not being quite the same.

He braced himself and opened his eyes. Yes, Zach knew this place. He knew this door with its two locks and a chain, this worn beige carpet in need of vacuuming. He knew this scent of stale cigarettes and old coffee, this kitchen with its plain white dishware, just enough for a single person. He knew it; now he just had to get used to living there.

It had been a long flight and an even longer case; he should just go to bed. But he made coffee anyway, then realized his milk had inevitably gone bad. That was all right. Maybe he should get used to drinking it black. Black coffee made no patterns; it had no secrets to reveal, no omens to tease him with how much he'd lost.

And he had lost, hadn't he? He'd gained as well, no question, but for the moment, it didn't seem like enough. He was here, on the other side, as he hadn't been since he was a child. He'd escaped a prison meant to hold him forever. But in doing so, he'd lost a woman he loved and his best friend.

Zach flipped on the TV, mug in hand, and took a sip, wincing a little at the harshness of the taste, bitterness unmuffled by milk's gentle blurring. He got out a cigarette, then put it away again. York had smoked; he, Zach, was trying to quit. Not for any sort of health reason, though of course he was familiar with all of them; merely to start to establish boundaries, a sense of who Zach was without York.

It wasn't that they had been identical before. They had different tastes; they argued. There had already been plenty of distinctions. It had simply never mattered before. When they couldn't be separated, why worry about boundaries? 

“York,” Zach said softly. “York, can you hear me?”

Nothing but the television replied. 

This was how other people did it. They lived alone and no one answered if they asked what channel they should watch or commented on something that happened. Zach had never found it lonely before, but why would he? He'd never been alone.

There were more channels here than there had been in Greenvale, but nothing grabbed his attention. When he realized he'd watched an entire episode without retaining any of it, Zach turned the TV off and went to dump the rest of his coffee in the sink. All this was because he was tired. _Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life,_ wasn't that how it went? It was more literally true for him than for most people, but it was still good advice.

He turned off the light and made his way to the bedroom in darkness. Zach had never walked down this hall before, never felt the faint give of the carpet beneath his shoes or the uneven texture of the paint on the walls beneath his trailing fingers, but he'd seen York do it so many times that he didn't need light. 

The bedroom was small, smaller than his hotel room in Greenvale, but he didn't turn on a light to look at this room either. He undressed (because York so rarely did), dropping the shirt, pants, and tie that he felt as though he'd put on in another lifetime in a heap on the floor because York would be horrified. It even made Zach wince a little, but he left them there and got in bed, the sheets cold against his bare skin. 

Now that he remembered what had happened to him, he knew why York slept in his clothes. Part of him had spent most of his life trapped in the blue spaceship pajamas he'd been wearing when he'd seen what had happened to his parents, forever that frightened and helpless child despite time passing and all the changes taking place in this world. York had never wanted to be surprised like that again. 

But Kaysen had been defeated and Zach had left the past behind. Maybe it was time for a new way.

It took him awhile to fall asleep in this familiar-yet-unfamiliar bed, but once he did, Zach had no dreams at all.


End file.
